A masked figure . . .

A flush rushed to my cheeks the moment I realized I was publicly embracing Lucas Cheney. Who, so far, had yet to hug me back.

As I hurried to draw away, though, his arms settled around me, pressing me to him. For one blissful moment, I sagged against him, letting my tired eyes fall shut. His warmth engulfed me, along with the scents of sandalwood, peppermint, and soap. All of it transported me from the terror of yesterday, and this reality where I lived in a horror-filled house, to a better world. One where there was only me and Lucas.

“Something happened,” he said after a pause that I got the sense he’d wanted to prolong, his voice a rumble that I felt more than heard with one of my ears pressed to the stiff fabric of his white button-down shirt.

I nodded. Then, gripping those iron biceps, I pushed back, forcing us apart. Lucas relented, his arms hesitant but obliging. I took a breath, staring straight into the buckle of the skinny belt he wore high around his waist along with a pair of wide-legged Dagwood-style trousers.

“Sorry I missed your text,” he said. “I crashed early last night and woke up late. I didn’t see it till this morning. But, you know . . . you can always call me.”

I took in a slow, stilted breath. “I wanted to. But . . .” I trailed off, clueless on how to begin. Because the incident with the sheet sounded crazy inside my own head. Putting it into words would no doubt make it doubly so.

“It wasn’t Charlie this time, was it?” he guessed.

I shook my head, my eyes following the trail of his tie to his collar and, finally, to the unearthly blues behind those glasses.

“What was it?” he said, his gaze searching mine. “Tell me.”

Here was the moment I’d been anxious for ever since yesterday. Why should I be, though? This was Lucas, after all. The boy who waved electromagnetic-field-measuring gizmos at closets. The boy who believed in a hereafter. The boy who had been right.

“I saw him,” I said. And, because I wanted to leave no room for doubt, I uttered the name I wasn’t supposed to. “Zedok.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Zedok

In Moldavia, doorways and thresholds held, for me alone, the power to open to one version of the house or the other.

Before yesterday, I had never been selective about how I made my comings and goings between the two houses. Until yesterday, whenever I had needed to return to my Moldavia, it had been the nearest door or archway that had served best.

But after hearing Stephanie sing, the metaphorical trapdoors that surrounded me had all presented themselves as more trap than door. Because with the revelation of Stephanie’s seraphic voice, there would be no telling which of my masks would be there to greet—or ambush—me behind any one of them. Knowing what I and thus they now knew, which one of them would not rend through the other in order to lay command of me?